16/04/2008 Ladbrokes joint venture wins betting licence in Madrid

Sportium, the Ladbrokes and Cirsa Slot Corporation SL joint venture, has been awarded a licence to operate sports betting in the Madrid region of Spain and expects to begin trading in the next fortnight.
 

The company's first shop will be located within an existing bingo hall on Castellana adjacent to the Bernabeu stadium in Madrid with 20 further outlets opening in the coming weeks. Sportium is expected to open up to 70 of outlets by the end of 2008, mainly in third party outlets and Cirsa-owned bingo halls and arcades.

Sportium expects most betting turnover to be on football but is offering a wide range of betting opportunities on sports including UK horse and greyhound racing, motor racing and tennis as well as handball and indoor football which are both popular in Spain.

Alan Ross, Ladbrokes plc Managing Director European Retail commented: "Through Sportium we will be operating our first betting shops in Spain in the coming days. Other Spanish regions are considering a similar licensing process and we hope to build Sportium into one of the leading betting brands in Spain."

Pablo Alcalá, Director of Cirsa Slot commented: "We have been operationally ready for some time so we are pleased to now have the licence to begin taking bets. The Spanish market has enormous potential and we are sure Sportium can become a major player as the market develops."

For further information contact:

Head of Public Relations
Ciaran O'Brien
Tel: 020 8 515 5104
Mobile +44 (0) 7976 180 173

Head of Investor Relations
Kate Elliot
Tel: 020 8 515 5730
Mobile +44 (0) 7855 335 013

About Cirsa Corporation

CIRSA Corporation, with 16,000 employees owns 22 traditional Casinos, 100 Arcades, 73 Electronic Casinos, near 100 Bingo halls and more than 85,000 slot machines in the restaurant/food-industry and in casinos worldwide. In Spain it provides daily service and support to more than 25,000 outlets and is an industry leader in terms of service and expertise. It has a presence in 70 countries and has invested more than 45 million Euros in R&D in the last three years.

About Ladbrokes plc

Ladbrokes plc employs over 14,000 people in the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Jersey and Gibraltar. The company is comprised of Ladbrokes, the world's biggest bookmaker and operator of one of Europe's leading telephone betting operations and Ladbrokes.com, the leading betting and gaming website which has customers in over 200 countries around the world. Ladbrokes is implementing its strategy for international expansion by opening betting outlets in Italy and the Madrid region of Spain.